Un-polarizing Ain't Easy

In the ultra-polarized world we live in, where the right is on the ascendant and the left won’t give in, where a war (of words, mostly; but not always) is fought daily on some issue, why do you think it is like this?

Note: Set aside the fanatics who are impervious to reason for this discussion.

First, even reasonable people have this tendency that Seth Godin cites:

“Someone gets caught cheating, or breaking a social taboo, or undermining the fabric of our culture in order to get ahead... And the fans of the team rush to his defense. It happens to spiritual leaders, in sports and in politics.”

You might think that presenting (reasonable) people with balanced information of the pros and cons would have one of two effects:

1)      A dilution in positions, at least by a little, since they should have a better understanding of some of the opposing arguments.

2)     Or at worst, people would ignore the information that doesn’t align with their views, and come out with no change in the degree of their beliefs.

Instead, study after study shows that both sides will usually come out with even stronger opinions than before! Remember, we’re talking of reasonable people, not fanatics. How can this happen? Here’s what happens:

1)      People ignore the evidence in support of their existing view.

2)     But they subject any opposing evidence to great scrutiny. Any flaws they find, anything questionable they find only reaffirms their belief in the “wrongness” of the opposing view.

Ergo, they come out with an even stronger view when presented with mixed evidence!

The other issue is that it is very difficult for people to analyze the full implication of changing their mind about some aspects of a belief. Take an example. Say, you are told there was a fire in a warehouse and there were flammable materials in it. Later, you hear that there were no flammable materials in there after all. Check out what happens:

“Subjects who have received this corrective information may correctly answer that there were no flammable chemicals in the warehouse and separately incorrectly answer that flammable chemicals caused the fire. This seeming contradiction can be explained by the fact that people update the factual information about the presence of flammable chemicals without also updating the causal inferences that followed from the incorrect information they initially received.”

Changing one’s mind, even for reasonable people, isn’t as easy as it seems. The problem isn’t just ego or vested interests; it’s rooted in how we are wired. Unfortunately, it probably means that there isn’t any easy way out.